Here is Devendra Banhart discussing several of his favorite albums. Banhart's last album Cripple Crow has become one of my very favorites of this decade. (btw, I just bought Caetano Veloso's Transa in Los Angeles, and it is a lovely record.)
Now let's go to Beck. I like Beck. In my opinion, Beck made some of the best pop songs of the last decade. But sometimes I disagree with him. More specifically, I disagreed with his last album, The Information. It's the one he made that included stickers so you could design your own cover (the stickers being already designed by people better at design than you). Upon the album's release, Wired magazine featured an article about Beck and his ideas for the "future of the album." The article said this:
"The very logistics and economics of the music industry are at stake, as one album becomes a long shelf of songs and products, each carrying its own release date, distribution path, and price tag. In the end, fans can create their own versions of the album, stringing fave songs and remixes into one ideal playlist."
In an interview, Beck talks excitedly about how technology can give fans new creative control over an artist's release. "I'd love to put out an album that you could edit and mix and layer directly in iTunes," he says. "In an ideal world, I'd find a way to let people truly interact with the records I put out – not just remix the songs, but maybe play them like a videogame."
Let the fans remix the songs. Let the fans mix the actual tracks to a song. Let the fans design the artwork. This all sounds well and good; democratizing the process of releasing an album, allowing each fan to feel a personal sense of aesthetic ownership for their handful of...whatever it is they end up with. Very collectivist. Very friendly.
But if you continue this formula of DIY involvement, you will eventually end up with a blank CD with nothing on it, musically or visually. Give the CD to a fan and say "make your own album." And there ya have it: ultimate creative control in the hands of the fan. Beck doesn't have to do a damn thing.
I think all of these things - the production of the songs, the sequence of the songs, the artwork and design of the packaging - are extremely important in defining an "album," because each one of these steps signifies another creative decision the artist must make. Consider, if you will, Karpal Tunnel Syndrome by Kid Koala, an album not only mixed and produced entirely by the DJ but also featuring his own package design (ink on brown cardboard) and a little comic book he authored. The result is a collection of ideas the musician had regarding his music, including the order of the songs and the visual, physical presentation of the product.
The Information isn't a bad album, but the songs lack the calculated inventiveness of Beck's past work. After all, how sincere can you be in producing a song when you are issuing it to be remixed, reimagined, and reinterpreted by your audience? Shouldn't Beck be striving to make albums that don't sound like they need remixing or editing? And wouldn't he want package artwork that intrigues the viewer and provides an appropriate visual for the music within? I return to Cripple Crow and it's whimsical, earthy group photo-collage cover that compliments the friendly folk atmosphere of the album.
Here is Tim Harrington from the band Les Savy Fav discussing the artistic merit of the album in a hilariously awkward little video. On a side note, I saw this guy drink beer from a plastic skull during a show in Portland. Here he points out that the invention of mp3 technology, which has nearly rendered musical albums economically obsolete, has now given a sequential collection of songs more artistic meaning. "Only by being freed from the bounds of technical necessity," Harrington says, "can albums become truly, purely aesthetic concerns." Think of such classic rock albums as Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road. Would the songs on the these albums retain the same weight and meaning if the order was different? What if "She Came In through the Bathroom Window" was followed by "Sun King"? It would sound dumb, that's what.
If Salvador Dali painted a background landscape and then handed it to me to finish, I would give it back to him, because he is the artist, and I like his work, and I want to see him complete it.
Both videos featured today were part of Insound's "Save the Album" campaign. There are some more here.
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